Howard Stern has laid off around a dozen staffers from his Sirius XM show and is preparing to cut The Howard Stern Show back to a single episode a week after the Labor Day holiday. The staffers were told over Zoom on Monday, July 14, then sent home immediately.
The move marks a sharp reduction for a program that currently airs three days a week. The remaining airtime is expected to be filled with archive material, while Stern kept a core team of veteran producers on, underscoring that the cuts were aimed at trimming a show he no longer needs to produce at its current volume.
The timing is what makes the decision land hard. Stern signed a new contract in December of last year that keeps him tied to the network for another three years, and he spent years building a reputation for long, celebrity-heavy interviews on Sirius XM, a run that has defined him since 2006. On December 16, he framed the deal as a way to have “more free time and continuing to be on the radio,” saying he had figured out a way to “have it all.”
That is why this cut feels less like a routine schedule tweak than a retreat from the promise he made to himself and his audience. Stern said he liked his days off and was “busy every minute,” and Beth later said his new schedule was working out really well for him, helping him stay connected and giving him an outlet to share his thoughts. The layoffs suggest that the extra time is arriving by shrinking the operation around him, not just rearranging his calendar.
The unresolved part is simple and telling: the show’s new weekly day has not been announced. What is clear is that after Labor Day, Stern will have a smaller staff, less original programming, and a format built around his archive rather than the three-day live routine listeners have been hearing until now.
